By now, I am sure you have seen the one Tweet from Elon regarding the most recent changes on Twitter:
And yes, that is a screenshot. Touche.
What is Going on With Twitter?
Since Twitter’s acquisition by Elon Musk on October 27th, 2022, the platform has had several changes, the latest being announced in a tweet this last Saturday: the reading limits.
Before this announcement – and several others that have changed how we use the platform – you could easily read, share and embed tweets pretty much everywhere without any concern (unless the account you were sharing from was private). Twitter now requires users to have an account to view tweets as well as has imposed “read limits” as a “temporary emergency measure”.
Why is all this happening?
According to Elon, this is how they are addressing “extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation”. Or as we, the users, understand it: it is just the fight against “the bots” and AI.
Bot accounts, also known as Twitter bots, are a type of software bot that controls a Twitter account via the Twitter API. While some bot accounts can be useful and positive, such as the ones providing automated updates or delivering helpful information, there are many bots designed to engage in spamming, spreading misinformation, or manipulating online conversations.
In the official statement released by Twitter, they define the measure as the way they are working to prevent bots from scraping people’s public Twitter data to build AI models and manipulate people and conversations on the platform in various ways.
Is This the End of Twitter?
To be completely honest: NO.
According to an article from Business Insider from back in 2021, it takes about 6.6 seconds to read each tweet. Taking that as a basis, it will take an average of 3,960 seconds to read 600 tweets – roughly 66 min – this, assuming no pauses, no distractions and that you dedicate one hour of your day every day to read tweets. The above numbers do not take into consideration long tweets.
Of course, having one hour of tweets might sound alarming to some; HOWEVER, bringing the numbers to reality, I know somebody that has already reached the limit – it took him about half a day – which potentially means that avid users might encounter issues with Twitter sooner while the average reader might not notice the difference. People following a large number of accounts are more likely to reach the limit and get discouraged from using the platform as it will make it harder for them to keep up with the latest tweets.
How is this Affecting Advertisers?
As reported by Bloomberg, Twitter said its temporary cap on the number of tweets that accounts can see each day has had minimal impact on advertising on the social media platform. Despite this, we recommend you review your strategy and segmentation if you are running ads on Twitter. While it would be an awful move to limit advertising views, we cannot guarantee the new limits will not affect reach and conversion rates for advertisers.
We will close this note with an old tweet with an opinion from Elon – as a screenshot as well – that might have changed now if we take into count that Twitter needs advertisers, but that should serve as a reminder that in the world of social media, not everyone we reach will be happy to see us around.
